London, UK - 4 March 2004, 14:00 GMT - "A long time ago in
a galaxy far far away... It is a period of war. A malware tsunami has struck
from three rebel bases, and a major blow to the Digital Empire has been dealt.
During the battle, rebels and criminal syndicates have managed to uncover
critical vulnerabilities across the galactic network.

An army of zombie computers is being amassed with enough power to cripple
the entire Digital Empire. Pursued by the malware writers with new variants,
the anti-virus generals have issued instructions to update malware definitions
every hour as opposed to every day. The critical issue of computer maintenance
has now become an insurmountable task..."

The trouble is that this problem is not occurring in a galaxy far far away
but right here and now in the global digital eco-system.

How is an hourly update regime tenable in an organisation with thousands of
computers? As a result of the malware tsunami in the last four days, a new
and dangerous point has been reached in the global digital eco-system. New
malware variants are released and proliferate ever faster and as a result
there is a lag before they are added to virus definition records, during which
they cannot be recognised by anti-virus systems. The majority of anti-virus
solutions currently on offer are therefore no longer viable in countering
malware tsunamis.